Thursday, August 8, 2013

POST #2

1 August 2013 - Ragged Lake
This evening finds us part way up the road to Baxter State Park and therefore we find ourselves out of touch again. I meant to let everyone know we would be gone for awhile but neither of us realized how fast we would slip off the grid once more.

We have a nice campsite right near the dam end of Ragged Lake. Trox has gone off for a ride and I'm holding down the fort.

Yesterday Trox went out for a ride to scout our next campsite but instead ended up exploring the B-52 crash site not too far from Lily Bay. It crashed January 24, 1963 and was flying out of Westover AFB on a routine low-level radar mission. It crashed due to a structural fault which resulted in its vertical stabilizer breaking off. In total there were 9 souls on board and 7 of them perished. The pilot and navigator both managed to survive their ejections. Actually according to information at the site the navigator is the only person to survive an ejection from an aircraft without the parachute opening. The site has been pretty well picked over but there is still a lot there and the companies, Scott Paper and Plum Creek Timber, that own the property have declared "The B-52 crash site on Elephant Mountain has been designated 'OFF-LIMITS' to all future salvage operations and the area surrounding the crash site is a 'No Harvest Zone'".
B-52 Crash Site
January 24, 1963

One of the things he did manage to do while he was out on his ride was to harvest some wild raspberries so this morning's breakfast was homemade wild Raspberry Pancakes! Before making breakfast he had gotten a nice kayak ride over to Sugar Island on FLAT water. Our plan was to stay in the same campsite another night but ended up it was reserved so we had to move on, which is how we found ourselves heading towards Baxter and the Allagash a day earlier than anticipated. While he was making his breakfast I paddled over to the day use area and beach and he broke camp and came and picked me up.
Pancake on the griddle

Where I was heading
through that gap and
around that point to the left
The land to the right is Sugar Island

Where I came from
Around that point and turn right

A little island on the way

Sugar Island

The kids are really good on the paddle boards


2 August 2013 - Allagash Gateway Campground on Ripogenus Lake
It started raining this morning about 4 and didn't let up until after noon. The forecast was for 100% chance of "pouring down rain" and that is exactly what happened! We left Ragged Lake about 10 and were heading for a campsite Trox had scouted on his bike ride yesterday evening. When we got there it was just too wet to get situated so instead we back tracked along The Golden Road to this campground. For those of you interested we are at N45 52.899 W69 13.337. We have hookups - of sorts. Power is available when the owner turns the generator on so we need to find out what the hours for that are. We have a beautiful site on a point right along the lake and if the sun comes out I may go paddling. We are going to stay for two nights and supposedly when the generator is running we will also have wifi so I may be able to post these last few updates.
A bridge along the Golden Road
This is the river out of the lake
we stayed on last night

Ragged Falls
just up from the bridge

Our campsite on the point
not too shabby

Merlin in our campsite from up by the office

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